Wasted Attention is an anti-pattern caused by excessive collaboration and meetings that hinders productivity in well-defined work, necessitating a shift back to efficient Factory Mode.
Key Points
Well-defined work managed through too much collaboration and meetings. Results in overhead, little output, and team frustration.
The Problem: Work that should be efficient becomes drowning in meetings → Constant status updates and reviews → People have no time for actual work
The Solution: Recognize well-defined work → shift it back to Factory Mode.
Details
Wasted Attention is an anti-pattern that occurs when well-defined, routine work is organized like Studio Mode – with constant meetings, endless reviews, and excessive collaboration. This creates organizational overhead that prevents real work from happening.
How Does Wasted Attention Emerge?
Typical Scenario:
- Manager wants more visibility and control
- Introduces daily status meetings
- Adds review sessions before each step
- Requests "everyone" in meetings for transparency
- Work gets interrupted constantly
- Very little actual productive work happens
- Timeline slips, creating pressure for more meetings
Symptoms of Wasted Attention
- "We're always in meetings" (or in chat threads)
- Status meetings that discuss trivial details
- Everyone invited to every discussion
- Difficulty finding uninterrupted focus time
- People work longer hours but produce less
- Team frustration and burnout increasing
- Decision-making becomes slow despite frequent meetings
Why Does This Happen?
Often emerges from:
- Fear of losing control → more meetings demanded
- Visibility anxiety → everything must be discussed
- Confusion about "Agile" → "lots of meetings = Agile"
- Project pressure → more oversight seems like solution
- Lack of trust → "let's just review everything"
Practical Examples
Mistake: Daily Standup for Well-Defined Work
- Problem: Routine order processing in 15 daily meetings
- Impact: 1h daily coordination for 30 min work
- Solution: Factory Mode with clear metrics, weekly check
Mistake: Everything Needs Team Consensus
- Problem: Approval meetings for every decision
- Impact: Simple decisions take days
- Solution: Clear decision authority in Factory Mode
Mistake: Multiple Status Updates
- Problem: Morning standup + afternoon update + weekly review
- Impact: Team spends 6h/week reporting, 2h actual work
- Solution: One clear metric, less frequent review
The Solution: Recognize and Shift Back
Recognition Signs for Over-Collaboration:
- Can people work 2 hours without being interrupted?
- Are meetings discussing execution details that should be standard?
- Does it take more time to discuss work than to do it?
- Are people frustrated by "too many meetings"?
- Is the work actually well-defined and routine?
If yes → Back to Factory Mode!
Practical Measures:
- Identify what work is actually well-defined
- Move it to Factory Mode with clear standards
- Reduce meeting frequency appropriately
- Use metrics instead of status meetings
- Trust people to do defined work
- Save collaboration for actual problems
Wasted Attention in Dynamic Work Design
Wasted Attention is the opposite of good Dynamic Work Design. It occurs when you don't properly distinguish between well-defined and ambiguous tasks.
Better: Keep well-defined work efficient, only collaborate when necessary.
This pattern is one of the two "poles" of the Axis of Frustration (the other pole being Ineffective Iterations).
Common Mistakes
- Confusing "visibility" with "constant meetings"
- Thinking "agile" means "always collaborating"
- Using meetings instead of clear standards
- Not trusting people to do routine work
Better: Clear standards, less meetings, trust people.
More about this
Dynamic Work Design was developed by Nelson P. Repenning and Donald C. Kieffer at MIT Sloan. Start with the foundational article "A New Approach to Designing Work" (2018) and watch "Unlock Your Organization's Full Potential with Dynamic Work Design" by Don Kieffer to see practical applications.